Following the Yosemite Grant Act of 1864 and the designation of America’s first National Park, Yellowstone, in 1876, the country underwent a cultural shift. For the first time, land began to be valued for its ecological significance, recreational use, and natural beauty. This was in part a result of the westward movement of large-scale industry and manufacturing: Rapid industrial expansion and its impacts on the natural landscape made even starker the necessity of environmental protections. It was in this environment that adamant conservationists like John Muir and his most important mentee Gifford Pinchot came to the fore.

In his new position as head of the United States Forest Service, which began in 1905, Pinchot worked to create, in his own words, “the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.” His governing assumption was that forests should be managed to provide a long-term benefit to society while also ensuring their health and productivity for future generations. Moreover, and in contrast to subsequent USFS chiefs like William Greeley, Pinchot implemented a novel approach to “scientific forestry,” one which prioritized sustainability while still allowing for controlled profits that could then fund further conservation efforts.

One other aspect of Pinchot’s approach to forestry was the use of photography to educate, document, and raise awareness about the state of American forests and the work required to maintain them. A photographer himself, Pinchot understood the varied applications and power of the medium. He first employed the camera in his previous position as director of the Division of Forestry (1898-1905), requiring field agents under his supervision to submit photographs along with their written inspection reports.

After the Transfer Act of 1905 and the official creation of the Forest Service, Pinchot tasked botanist George Sudworth with crafting photographic guidelines for forest rangers nationwide. Sudworth, who had himself previously photographed California’s giant sequoias, disseminated a set of standardized instructions and principles on camera use and photographic composition. Sudworth’s efforts inaugurated a program that has come to comprise a photographic archive of tens of thousand of photographs that documented forestry conditions across the United States.

The present collection offers a national survey of Forest Service imagery. One third of the collection focuses on methods of wildfire prevention and suppression, while other photographs in the collection document aspects of land management, including trail construction and maintenance, tree surgery, selective logging, reforestation and transplantation. Also present are typological “portraits” identifying tree species and their habitats throughout the US. These portraits, along with an included grouping of images from European forestry services, were intended “to illustrate material of educational value concerning forestry and the best use of forests and forest products,” per a stamp that appears on the verso of many of the prints. The locations of forests represented within the collection include Arizona, California, Colorado, North and South Carolina, Idaho, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. The majority of photographers are not identified, but certain images are attributed to H.C. Hilton, Ray Filloon, D.M. Shaw, and Wharton Huber.

Many of the photographs bear a stamp of the American Forestry Association, in Washington D.C., as well as stamps of the Forest Service, and the Brown Brothers photographic agency. Condition throughout the collection is generally good, however some prints possess creases and tears at the sheet edges, as well as annotations verso. This is associated with their use as agency photographs.